March 5th, 2007 by James Omdahl
Every Monday morning I take a few minutes to check the rank of www.insureme.com on various search engines. I also use the SEOpen tool to do a backlink check on InsureMe to see the number of links that are being shown by Google, Yahoo and MSN. While Google and Yahoo’s link counts are usually fairly steady, with occasional index update, MSN is all over the place.
Here is a little visual representation of the last three months of MSN backlink counts using “link:www.insureme.com” as the search:
It seems to me that this could explain all of the volatility in MSN’s search results. I mean a swing from 339 links, to 9,631 links and then back to 351 in a three week period has got to totally flip out MSN’s results. I wonder what the heck is going on.
Does anyone else watch their MSN backlinks? Are you seeing similar shifts in link count or is it just me?
March 5th, 2007 at 9:34 am
You speak em truth, except Google and Yahoo treat me the same way. None of them seem to recognize 1/3 of my backlinks, Google disses me with low toolbar PR - but still sends some really sweet traffic to deep pages. The whole thing does not compute.
March 5th, 2007 at 9:44 am
Good to hear from you Quoteus.
Have you tried out the backlink checker through Google Webmaster Central? By logging in and claiming your site you can get much more accurate backlink numbers from Google. If you havent tried it out, I would recommend doing it. It should show you a lot more backlinks than the “link:” operator will.
March 5th, 2007 at 10:08 am
Thanks for the tip. Ill try it. I have used some 3rd party software which attributes a lot more backlinks than the link: operator, so maybe thats where they get a feed from. For a long time, only my domain (and no pages)showed PR at all. Now some pages are getting a tiny bit of love. Im hoping the next update brings some love.
March 5th, 2007 at 12:05 pm
Hey there Jim -
Thanks for highlighting this. I didnt even know this backlink checking was available away from Technorati. I will implement it later today.